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I have been spending a bunch of my time recently thinking through the impact on what David Rose of Ditto Labs and MIT Media Lab romantically calls ‘Enchanted Objects’. What are enchanted objects? Enchanted Objects are devices, appliances, tools, dishware, anything that is ultimately connected to the Internet (or any connected network) and become to some degree aware of the world around them. Imagine an Umbrella that has a light on its hilt that lights up if it may rain today, reminding you that you might want to bring it along on your travels. Imagine your pantry and refrigerator communicating with your grocery cart at the store while you shop, letting you know the things you are running low on or even bypasses the part where you have to shop, and automatically just orders it to your home. This approach is going to fundamentally change everything you know in life from credit cards to having a barbeque with friends. These things and their capabilities are going to change our world in ways that we cannot even fathom today. Our Technology Industry calls this emerging field, the Internet of Things. Ugh! How absolutely boring. Our industry has this way of sucking all the fun out of things don’t we? I personally feel that ‘Enchanted Objects’ is a far more compelling classification, as it speaks to the possibilities, wonderment and possibly terror that lies in store for us. If we must make it sound ‘technical’ maybe we can call it the Enchantosphere.

While I may someday do a post about all of the interesting things I have found out there already, or the ideas that I have come up with for this new enchanted world, I wanted to to reflect a bit on what it means for the things that I normally write about. You know, things like The cloud, big infrastructure, and scaled software development. So go grab your walking staff of traffic conditions and come on an interesting journey into the not-so-distant world of Cloud powered magic…

The first thing you need to understand is, if you work in this industry, you are not an idle player in this magical realm. You are, for lack of a better term, a wizard or an enchanter. Your role will be pivotal in creating magic items, maintaining the magic around us, or ensuring that the magic used by everyone stays strong. While the Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy book references are almost limitless for this conversation I am going to try and bring it back to the world we know today. I promise. I am really just trying to tease out a glimpse of the world to come and the importance of the cloud, data center infrastructure, and the significant impacts on software development and how software based services may have to evolve.

The Magical Weaves Surround Us

Every device and enchanted item will be connected. Whether via through WIFI in your work and home, over mobile networks, or all of the above and more, these Enchanted Objects will be connected to the magical weaves all around us. If you happen to be a network engineer you know that I am talking to you. All of these objects are going to have to connect to something. If you are one of those folks who are stuck in IPv4, you better upgrade yourself. There just isn’t enough address space there to connect everything in our magical world of the future. IPv6 will be a must. In fact, these devices could just be that ‘killer app’ that drives global adoption of the standard even faster. But its not just about address space, these kind of connected objects are going to open up and challenge whole new areas in security, spectrum management, routing, and a host of other areas. I am personally thinking through some very interesting source-based routing applications in the Enchantosphere as well. The short of it is, this new magical world is going to stress the limits of how things are connected today and Network Engineers will be charged with keeping our magical weaves flowing to allow our charmed existences to continue. You are the Keepers of the Magical Weave and I am not talking about a tricked out hairpiece either.

While just briefly mentioned above – Security Engineers are going to have to evolve significantly as well. It will lead into whole new areas and fields of privacy protection hard to even conceive at this point. Even things like Health and Safety will need to be considered. Imagine a stove that starts pre-heating itself based on where you are on your commute home and the dinner menu you have planned. While some of those controls will need to be programmed into the software itself, there is no doubt that those capabilities will need to be well guarded. Why, I can almost see the Wards and Glyphs of Protection you will have to create.

The Wizard’s Tower

As cool as all these enchanted objects could be, they would all be worthless IP-enabled husks without the advent of the construct that we now call The Cloud. When I talk about ‘The Cloud’ I am talking about more than just virtualized server instances and marketing-laden terminology. I am talking about Data Centers. I am talking about automation. I am talking about ubiquitous compute capabilities all around the world. The actual physical places where the magical services live! The Data Centers which include the technologies of both IT and facilities infrastructure and automation, The proverbial Wizards Tower! This is where our enchanted objects will come to discover who they, how they work, what they should do, and retrieve any new capabilities they may yet magically receive. This new world is going to drive the need for more compute centers across the globe. This growth will not just be driven by demand, although the demand will admittedly be huge, but by other more mundane ‘muggle’ matters such as regulatory requirements, privacy enforcement, taxation and revenue. I bet you were figuring that with all this new found magical power flying around we would be able to finally rid ourselves of lawyers, legislators, government hacks, and the like. Alas, it is after all still the real world. Cloud Computing capacity will continue to grow, the demand for services increasing, and the development of an entire eco-system of software and services that sit atop the various cloud providers will be birthed.

I don’t know if many of you have read Robert Jordan’s fantasy series called ‘The Wheel of Time’, but in that series he has a a classification of enchanted objects called the Terangreal. These are single purpose or limited power artifacts that anyone can use. Like my example of the umbrella that lights up if its going to rain after it checks with Weatherbug for weather conditions in your area, or a ring that lights up to let you know that there is a new Loosebolts post available to read, or a garden gnome whose hat lights up when it detects evidence of plant eating bugs in your garden. These are devices that require no technical knowledge to use, configure, but give some value to its owner. They do their function and that is it. By the way, I am an engineer not a marketing guy, if you don’t like my examples of special purpose enchanted objects you can tweet me better ones at @mjmanos.

These devices will reach out, download their software, learn their capabilities, and just work as advertised. Software in this model may seem very similar to todays software development techniques and environments but I believe we will begin to see fundamental changes in how software works and is distributed. Software will be portable. Services will be portable. Allowing for truly amazing “Multi-purpose” enchanted objects. The ability to download “apps” to these objects can become common place. Even something as a common place as a credit card could evolve to a piece of software or code that could be transported around in various devices. Simply wave that RFID enabled stick (ok, wand) that contains your credit card app at the register and as long as you are wearing your necklace which stores your digital ID the transaction goes through. Two factor authentication in the real world. Or instead of a wand, maybe its just your wallet. When thinking about this app enabled platform it gives a whole new meaning to the Capital One catchphrase Whats in your wallet? The bottom line here is that a whole host of software, services, and other capabilities will become incredibly portable, and allow for some very interesting enchanted objects indeed.

The bottom line here is that we are just beginning to see into a new world of the Internet of Things… of Enchanted Objects. The simpler things become the more complex they truly are. Those of us who deal with large scale infrastructure, software and service development, and cloud based technologies have a heck of a ride ahead of us. We are the keepers of the complex, Masters of the Arcane, and needers of a good bath.

(10/31/2013 – Mountain View, California) – Close examination of Google’s data center construction related purchases has revealed the procurement of large scale deep earth mining equipment. While the actual need for the deep mining gear is unclear, many speculate that it has to do with a secretive internal project that has come to light known only as Project: Rabbit Ears.

According to sources not at all familiar with Google technology infrastructure strategy, Project Rabbit ears is the natural outgrowth of Google’ desire to provide ubiquitous infrastructure world wide. On the surface, these efforts seem consistent with other incorrectly speculated projects such as Project Loon, Google’s attempt to provide Internet services to residents in the upper atmosphere through the use of high altitude balloons, and a project that has only recently become visible and the source of much public debate – known as ‘Project Floating Herring’, where apparently a significantly sized floating barge with modular container-based data centers sitting in the San Francisco Bay has been spied.

“You will notice there is no power or network infrastructure going to any of those data center shipping containers,” said John Knownothing, chief Engineer at Dubious Lee Technical Engineering Credibility Corp. “That’s because they have mastered wireless electrical transfer at the large multi-megawatt scale.”

Real Estate rates in the Bay Area have increased almost exponentially over the last ten years making the construction of large scale data center facilities an expensive endeavor. During the same period, The Port of San Francisco has unfortunately seen a steady decline of its import export trade. After a deep analysis it was discovered that docking fees in the Port of San Francisco are considerably undervalued and will provide Google with an incredibly cheap real estate option in one of the most expensive markets in the world.

It will also allow them to expand their use of renewable energy through the use of tidal power generation built directly into the barges hull. “They may be able to collect as much as 30 kilowatts of power sitting on the top of the water like that”, continues Knownothing, “and while none of that technology is actually visible, possible, or exists, we are certain that Google has it.”

While the technical intricacies of the project fascinate many, the initiative does have its critics like Compass Data Center CEO, Chris Crosby, who laments the potential social aspects of this approach, “Life at sea can be lonely, and no one wants to think about what might happen when a bunch of drunken data center engineers hit port.” Additionally, Crosby mentions the potential for a backslide of human rights violations, “I think we can all agree that the prospect of being flogged or keel hauled really narrows down the possibility for those outage causing human errors. Of course, this sterner level of discipline does open up the possibility of mutiny.”

However, the public launch of Project Floating Herring will certainly need to await the delivery of the more shrouded Project Rabbit Ears for various reasons. Most specifically the primary reason for the development of this technology is so that Google can ultimately drive the floating facility out past twelve miles into International waters where it can then dodge all national, regional, and local taxation, the safe harbor and privacy legislation of any country or national entity on the planet that would use its services. In order to realize that vision, in the current network paradigm, Google would need exceedingly long network cables to attach to Network Access Points and Carrier Connection points as the facilities drive through international waters.

This is where Project Rabbit Ears becomes critical to the Google Strategy. Making use of the deep earth mining equipment, Google will be able to drill deep into the Earths crust, into the mantle, and ultimately build a large Network Access Point near the Earth’s core. This Planetary WIFI solution will be centrally located to cover the entire earth without the use of regional WIFI repeaters. Google’s floating facilities could then gain access to unlimited bandwidth and provide yet another consumer based monetization strategy for the company.

Knownothing also speculates that such a move would allow Google to make use of enormous amounts of free geo-thermic power and almost singlehandedly become the greenest power user on the planet. Speculation also abounds that Google could then sell that power through its as yet un-invented large scale multi-megawatt wireless power transfer technology as unseen on its floating data centers.

Much of the discussion around this kind of technology innovation driven by Google has been given credible amounts of veracity and discussed by many seemingly intelligent technology based news outlets and industry organizations who should intellectually know better, but prefer not to acknowledge the inconvenient lack of evidence.

\Mm

Editors Note: I have many close friends in the Google Infrastructure organization and firmly believe that they are doing some amazing, incredible work in moving the industry along especially solving problems at scale. What I find simply amazing is in the search for innovation how often our industry creates things that may or may not be there and convince ourselves so firmly that it exists.

Its one of those times I really hate to be right. As many of you know I have been talking about the various grass roots efforts afoot across many of the Member EU countries to start driving a more significant tax regimen on Internet based companies. My predictions for the last few years have more been cautionary tales based on what I saw happening from a regulatory perspective on a much smaller scale, country to country.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article discussing France’s movements to begin taxation on Internet related companies who derive revenue from users and companies across the entirety of the EU, but holding those companies responsible to the tax base in each country. This could likely mean that such legislation is likely to become quite fractured and tough for Internet Companies to navigate. The French proposition is asking the European Commission to draw up proposals by the Spring of 2014.

This is likely to have a very interesting (read as cost increases) across just about every aspect of Internet and Cloud Computing resources. From a business perspective this is going to increase costs which will likely be passed on to consumers in small but interesting ways. Internet advertising will need to be differentiated on a country by country basis, and advertisers will end up having different cost structures, Cloud Computing Companies will DEFINITELY need to understand where instances of customer instances were, and whether or not they were making money. Potentially more impactful, customers of Cloud computing may be held to account for taxation accountability that they did not know they had! Things like Data Center Site Selection are likely going to become even more complicated from a tax analysis perspective as countries with higher populations will likely become no-go zones (perhaps) or require the passage of even more restrictive laws around it.

Its not like the seeds of this haven’t been around since 2005, I think most people just preferred to keep a blind eye to the tax that the seed was sprouting into a full fledged tree. Going back to my Cat and Mouse Papers from a few years ago… The Cat has caught the mouse, its now the mouse’s move.

\Mm

Authors Note: If you don’t have a subscription to the WSJ, All Things Digital did a quick synopsis of the article here.

This week the Data Center Industry got the terrible news it knew might be coming for some time. That Ken Brill, founder of the Uptime Institute had passed away. Many of us knew that Ken had been ill for some time and although it may sound silly, were hoping he could somehow pull through it. Even as ill as he was, Ken was still sending and receiving emails and staying in touch with this industry that quite frankly he helped give birth to.

I was recently asked about Ken and his legacy for a Computerworld article and it really caused me to stop and re-think his overall legacy and gift to the rest of us in the industry. Ken Brill was a pioneering, courageous, tenacious, visionary who through his own force of will saw the inefficiencies in a nascent industry and helped craft it into what it is today.

Throughout his early career experience Ken was able to see the absolute silo’ing of information, best practices, and approaches that different enterprises were developing around managing their mission critical IT spaces. While certainly not alone in the effort, he became the strongest voice and champion to break down those walls, help others through the process and build a network of people who would share these ideas amongst each other. Before long an industry was born. Sewn together through his sometimes delicate, sometimes not so delicate cajoling and through it all his absolute passion for the Data Center industry at large.

In that effort he also created and permeated the language that the industry uses as commonplace. Seeing a huge gap in terms of how people communicated and compared mission critical capabilities he became the klaxon of the Tiering system which essentially normalized the those conversations across the Data Center Industry. While some (including myself) have come to think it’s a time to re-define how we classify our mission critical spaces, we all have to pay homage to the fact that Ken’s insistence and drive for the Tiering system created a place and a platform to even have such conversations.

One of Ken’s greatest strengths was his adaptability. For example, Ken and I did not always agree. I remember an Uptime Fellows meeting back in 2005 or 2006 or so in Arizona. In this meeting I started talking about the benefits of modularization and reduced infrastructure requirements augmented by better software. Ken was incredulous and we had significant conversations around the feasibility of such an approach. At another meeting we discussed the relative importance or non-importance of a new organization called ‘The Green Grid’ ()and if Uptime should closely align itself with those efforts. Through it all Ken was ultimately adaptable. Whether it was giving those ideas light for conversation amongst the rest of the Uptime community via audio blogs, or other means, Ken was there to have a conversation.

In an industry where complacency has become commonplace, where people rarely question established norms, it was always comforting to know that Ken was there acting the firebrand, causing the conversation to happen. This week we lost one of the ‘Great Ones’ and I for one will truly miss him. To his family my deepest sympathies, to our industry I ask, “Who will take his place?”

I thought I would start my first post by addressing the second New York Times article first. Why? Because it specifically mentions activities and messages sourced from me at the time when I was responsible for running the Microsoft Data Center program. I will try to track the timeline mentioned in the article with my specific recollections of the events. As Paul Harvey used to say, so then you could know the ‘REST of the STORY’.

I remember my first visit to Quincy, Washington. It was a bit of a road trip for myself and a few other key members of the Microsoft site selection team. We had visited a few of the local communities and power utility districts doing our due diligence on the area at large. Our ‘Heat map’ process had led us to Eastern Washington state. Not very far (just a few hours) from the ‘mothership’ of Redmond, Washington. It was a bit of a crow eating exercise for me as just a few weeks earlier I had proudly exclaimed that our next facility would not be located on the West Coast of the United States. We were developing an interesting site selection model that would categorize and weight areas around the world. It would take in FEMA disaster data, fault zones, airport and logistics information, location of fiber optic and carrier presence, workforce distributions, regulatory and tax data, water sources, and power. This was going to be the first real construction effort undertaken by Microsoft. The cost of power was definitely a factor as the article calls out. But just as equal was the generation mix of the power in the area. In this case a predominance of hydroelectric. Low to No carbon footprint (Rivers it turns out actually give off carbon emissions I came to find out). Regardless the generation mix was and would continue to be a hallmark of site selection of the program when I was there. The crow-eating exercise began when we realized that the ‘greenest’ area per our methodology was actually located in Eastern Washington along the Columbia River.

We had a series of meetings with Real Estate folks, the local Grant County PUD, and the Economic Development folks of the area. Back in those days the secrecy around who we were was paramount, so we kept our identities and that of our company secret. Like geeky secret agents on an information gathering mission. We would not answer questions about where we were from, who we were, or even our names. We ‘hid’ behind third party agents who took everyone’s contact information and acted as brokers of information. That was early days…the cloak and dagger would soon come out as part of the process as it became a more advantageous tool to be known in tax negotiations with local and state governments.

During that trip we found the perfect parcel of land, 75 acres with great proximity to local sub stations, just down line from the Dams on the nearby Columbia River. It was November 2005. As we left that day and headed back it was clear that we felt we had found Site Selection gold. As we started to prepare a purchase offer we got wind that Yahoo! was planning on taking a trip out to the area as well. As the local folks seemingly thought that we were a bank or large financial institution they wanted to let us know that someone on the Internet was interested in the area as well. This acted like a lightning rod and we raced back to the area and locked up the land before they Yahoo had a chance to leave the Bay Area. In these early days the competition was fierce. I have tons of interesting tales of cloak and dagger intrigue between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. While it was work there was definitely an air of something big on the horizon. That we were all at the beginning of something. In many ways many of the Technology professionals involved regardless of company forged some deep relationships and competition with each other.

The article talks about how the ‘Gee-Whiz moment faded pretty fast’. While I am sure that it faded in time (as all things do), I also seem to recall the huge increase of local business as thousands of construction workers descended upon this wonderful little town, the tours we would give local folks and city council dignitaries, a spirit of true working together. Then of course there was the ultimate reduction in properties taxes resulting from even our first building and an increase in home values to boot at the time. Its an oft missed benefit that I am sure the town of Quincy and Grant County has continued to benefit from as the Data Center Cluster added Yahoo, Sabey, IAC, and others. I warmly remember the opening day ceremonies and ribbon cutting and a sense of pride that we did something good. Corny? Probably – but that was the feeling. There was no talk of generators. There were no picket signs, in fact the EPA of Washington state had no idea on how to deal with a facility of this size and I remember openly working in partnership on them. That of course eventually wore off to the realities of life. We had a business to run, the city moved on, and concerns eventually arose.

The article calls out a showdown between Microsoft and the Power Utility District (PUD) over a fine for missing capacity forecasting target. As this happened much after I left the company I cannot really comment on that specific matter. But I can see how that forecast could miss. Projecting power usage months ahead is more than a bit of science mixed with art. It gets into the complexity of understanding capacity planning in your data centers. How big will certain projects grow. Will they meet expectations?, fall short?, new product launches can be duds or massive successes. All of these things go into a model to try and forecast the growth. If you think this is easy I would submit that NOONE in the industry has been able to master the crystal ball. I would also submit that most small companies haven’t been able to figure it out either. At least at companies like Microsoft, Google, and others you can start using the law and averages of big numbers to get close. But you will always miss. Either too high, or too low. Guess to low and you impact internal budgeting figures and run rates. Not Good. Guess to high and you could fall victim to missing minimal contracts with utility companies and be subject to fines.

In the case mentioned in the article, the approach taken if true would not be the smartest method especially given the monthly electric bill for these facilities. It’s a cost of doing business and largely not consequential at the amount of consumption these buildings draw. Again, if true, it was a PR nightmare waiting to happen.

At this point the article breaks out and talks about how the Microsoft experience would feel more like dealing with old-school manufacturing rather than ‘modern magic’ and diverts to a situation at a Microsoft facility in Santa Clara, California.

The article references that this situation is still being dealt with inside California so I will not go into any detailed specifics, but I can tell you something does not smell right in the state of Denmark and I don’t mean the Diesel fumes. Microsoft purchased that facility from another company. As the usage of the facility ramped up to the levels it was certified to operate at, operators noticed a pretty serious issue developing. While the building was rated to run at certain load size, it was clear that the underground feeders were undersized and the by-product could have polluted the soil and gotten into the water system. This was an inherited problem and Microsoft did the right thing and took the high road to remedy it. It is my recollection that all sides were clearly in know of the risks, and agreed to the generator usage whenever needed while the larger issue was fixed. If this has come up as a ‘air quality issue’ I personally would guess that there is politics at play. I’m not trying to be an apologist but if true, it goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.

At this point the article cuts back to Quincy. It’s a great town, with great people. To some degree it was the winner of the Internet Jackpot lottery because of the natural tech resources it is situated on. I thought that figures quoted around taxes were an interesting component missed in many of the reporting I read.

“Quincy’s revenue from property taxes, which data centers do pay, has risen from $815,250 in 2005 to a projected $3.6 million this year, paying for a library and repaved streets, among other benefits, according to Tim Snead, the city administrator.”

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post my job is ultimately to get things done and deliver results. When you are in charge of a capital program as large as Microsoft’s program was at the time – your mission is clear – deliver the capacity and start generating value to the company. As I was presented the last crop of beans harvested from the field at the ceremony we still had some ways to go before all construction and capacity was ready to go. One of the key missing components was the delivery and installation of a transformer for one of the substations required to bring the facility up to full service. The article denotes that I was upset that the PUD was slow to deliver the capacity. Capacity I would add that was promised along a certain set of timelines and promises and commitments were made and money was exchanged based upon those commitments. As you can see from the article, the money exchanged was not insignificant. If Mr. Culbertson felt that I was a bit arrogant in demanding a follow through on promises and commitments after monies and investments were made in a spirit of true partnership, my response would be ‘Welcome to the real world’. As far as being cooperative, by April the construction had already progressed 15 months since its start. Hardly a surprise, and if it was, perhaps the 11 acre building and large construction machinery driving around town could have been a clue to the sincerity of the investment and timelines. Harsh? Maybe. Have you ever built a house? If so, then you know you need to make sure that the process is tightly managed and controlled to ensure you make the delivery date.

The article then goes on to talk about the permitting for the Diesel generators. Through the admission of the Department of Ecology’s own statement, “At the time, we were in scramble mode to permit our first one of these data centers.” Additionally it also states that:

Although emissions containing diesel particulates are an environmental threat, they were was not yet classified as toxic pollutants in Washington. The original permit did not impose stringent limits, allowing Microsoft to operate its generators for a combined total of more than 6,000 hours a year for “emergency backup electrical power” or unspecified “maintenance purposes.”

At the time all this stuff was so new, everyone was learning together. I simply don’t buy that this was some kind Big Corporation versus Little Farmer thing. I cannot comment on the events of 2010 where Microsoft asked for itself to be disconnected from the Grid. Honestly that makes no sense to me even if the PUD was working on the substation and I would agree with the articles ‘experts’.

Well that’s my take on my recollection of events during those early days of the Quincy build out as it relates to the articles. Maybe someday I will write a book as the process and adventures of those early days of birth of Big Infrastructure was certainly exciting. The bottom line is that the data center industry is amazingly complex and the forces in play are as varied as technology to politics to people and everything in between. There is always a deeper story. More than meets the eye. More variables. Decisions are never black and white and are always weighted against a dizzying array of forces.

I have been following with some interest the series of articles in the New York Times by Jim Glanz. The series premiered on Sunday with an article entitled Power, Pollution and the Internet, which was followed up today with a deeper dive in some specific examples. The examples today (Data Barns in a farm town, Gobbling Power and Flexing muscle) focused on the Microsoft program, a program of which I have more than some familiarity since I ran it for many years. After just two articles, reading the feedback in comments, and seeing some of the reaction in the blogosphere it is very clear that there is more than a significant amount of misunderstanding, over-simplification, and a lack of detail I think is probably important. In doing so I want to be very clear that I am not representing AOL, Microsoft, or any other organization other than my own personal observations and opinions.

As mentioned in both of the articles I was one of hundreds of people interviewed by the New York Times for this series. In those conversations with Jim Glanz a few things became very apparent. First – He has been on this story for a very long time, at least a year. As far as journalists go, he was incredibly deeply engaged and armed with tons of facts. In fact, he had a trove of internal emails, meeting minutes, and a mountain of data through government filings that must have taken him months to collect. Secondly, he had the very hard job of turning this very complex space into a format where the uneducated masses can begin to understand it. Therein lies much of the problem – This is an incredibly complex space to try and communicate it to those not tackling it day to day or even understand that technological, regulatory forces involved. This is not an area or topic that can be sifted down to a sound bite. If this were easy, there really wouldn’t be a story would there?

At issue for me is that the complexity of the powers involved seems to get scant attention aiming larger for the “Data Centers are big bad energy vampires hurting the environment” story. Its clearly evident reading through the comments on the both of the articles so far. Claiming that the sources and causes have everything to do from poor web page design to government or multi-national companies conspiracies to corner the market on energy.

So I thought I would take a crack article by article to shed some light (the kind that doesn’t burn energy) on some of the topics and just call out where I disagree completely. In full transparency the “Data Barns” article doesn’t necessarily paint me as a “nice guy”. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I am not. I am not an apologist, nor do I intend to do so in this post. I am paid to get stuff done. To execute. To deliver. Quite frankly the PUD missed deadlines (the progenitor event to my email quoted in the piece) and sometimes people (even utility companies) have to live in the real world of consequences. I think my industry reputation, work, and fundamental stances around driving energy efficiency and environmental conservancy in this industry can stand on its own both publicly and for those that have worked for me.

There is an inherent irony here that these articles were published in both print and electronically to maximize the audience and readership. To do that, these articles made “multiple trips” through a data center, and ultimately reside in one (or more). They seem to denote that keeping things online is bad which seems to go against the availability and need of the articles themselves. Doesn’t the New York times expect to make these articles available on-line for people to read? Its posted online already. Perhaps they expect that their micro-fiche experts would be able to serve the demand for these articles in the future? I do not think so.

This is a complex eco-system of users, suppliers, technology, software, platforms, content creators, data (both BIG and small), regulatory forces, utilities, governments, financials, energy consumption, people, personalities, politics, company operating tenets, community outreach to name a very few. On top of managing through all these variables they also have to keep things running with no downtime.

Site Selection can be a tricky thing. You spend a ton of time upfront looking for that perfect location. The confluence of dozens of criteria, digging through fiber maps, looking at real estate, income and other state taxes. Even the best laid plans, and most thoughtful of approaches can be waylaid by changes in government, the emergence of new laws, and other regulatory changes which can put your selection at risk. I was recently made aware of yet another cautionary artifact you might want to pay attention to: Pay to Play laws and budget challenged States.

As many of my frequent readers know, I am from Chicago. In Chicago, and Illinois at large “Pay to Play” has much different connotations than the topic I am about to bring up right now. In fact the Chicago version broke out into an all out National and International Scandal. There is a great book about it if you are interested, aptly entitled, Pay to Play.

The Pay to Play that I am referring to is an emerging set of regulations and litigation techniques that require companies to pay tax bills upfront (without any kind of recourse or mediation) which then forces companies to litigate to try and recover those taxes if unfair. Increasingly I am seeing this in states where the budgets are challenged and governments are looking for additional funds and are targeting Internet based products and services. In fact, I was surprised to learn that AOL has been going through this very challenge. While I will not comment on the specifics of our case (its not specifically related to Data Centers anyway) it may highlight potential pitfalls and longer term items to take into effect when performing Data Center Site Selection. You can learn more about the AOL case here, if you are interested.

For me it highlights that lack of understanding of Internet services by federal and local governments combined with a lack of inhibition in aggressively pursuing revenue despite that lack of understanding can be dangerous and impactful to companies in this space. These can pose real dangers especially in where one site selects for their facility. These types of challenges can come into play whether you are building your own facility, selecting a colocation facility and hosting partner, or if stretched eventually where your cloud provider may have located their facility.

It does beg the question as to whether or not you have checked into the financial health of the States you may be hosting your data and services in. Have you looked at the risk that this may pose to your business? It may be something to take a look at!